first edition Hardcover
1924 · New York
by Scarborough, Harold E.
New York: D. Appleton and Company. Near Fine in Near Fine dj. 1924. First American Edition. Hardcover. [book is nice and clean, with just a touch of wear to cloth at extremities; jacket similarly nice, with small bits of edgewear here and there, minor smudging on spine, some visible wear and tiny paper loss at corners of front panel]. Novel playing on the "never-ending charm in the story of the royal lady who loves the commoner." He's a journalist who meets a lovely young princess from "Versailia -- a small country of Eastern Europe, given its independence by the Treaty of Versailles," while en route to England to claim a promised inheritance. When the inheritance falls through, he is sent as a foreign correspondent to (of course) Versailia, where he not only gets re-acquainted with the princess, but through "the strange course of fortune," actually becomes the country's king! This was the first of only two novels by this author, primarily a newspaperman who was for some years the chief European correspondent for the N.Y. Herald Tribune; his second novel was "The Immortals," and he wrote one additional book, "England Muddles Through," published in 1932, before meeting an untimely end at the age of 38 in 1935, when he fell overboard from an ocean liner off Southampton, England. (There is an artist's signature on the front jacket illustration, but I can't make it out.) . (Inventory #: 19439)